Opposite ideas, same honor: 'capitalism' and 'socialism'

NEW YORK - Thanks to the election, socialism and capitalism are forever wed as Merriam-Webster's most looked-up words of 2012.

NEW YORK — Thanks to the election, socialism and capitalism are forever wed as Merriam-Webster’s most looked-up words of 2012.

Traffic for the unlikely pair on the company’s website about doubled this year from the year before as the health-care debate heated up and discussion intensified over American capitalism versus European socialism, said the editor at large, Peter Sokolowski.

The choice revealed yesterday was “kind of a no-brainer,” he said. The side-by-side interest among political candidates and around kitchen tables prompted the dictionary folk to settle on two words of the year rather than one for the first time since the accolade began in 2003.

Democracy, globalization, marriage and bigot — all touched by politics — made the Top 10, in no particular order. The latter two were driven in part by the fight for same-sex marriage acceptance.

Last year’s word of the year was austerity. Before that, it was pragmatic.